Merry Christmas! As the festive season rolls in again, we want to look back on 2021. In what has been a rather turbulent year for many, at Sorted Communications we’ve gone through several significant changes of our own.
Most notably, we had a makeover! In January, we officially launched our new company name and brand. Previously called The Effective English Company, Sorted Communications is more in keeping with our ethos: a no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point approach that does exactly what it says on the tin. While our new name also brought about a new look and new website, there was no change to the communications support we provide for clients.
Throughout the year, we’ve continued working as a flexible extra pair of hands for our clients and 2021 has seen us support 25 different clients (10 of them new this year).
We’ve written and published no fewer than 44 blogs on our brand new website and have helped our clients with 40 case studies, 37 articles, 7 press releases, 5 project reports, 4 tender bids and 2 annual reports. We also supported an international pharmaceutical company by writing, editing and proofreading over 100,000 words of public-facing content for their website. By the end of the year, we will have completed almost 400 tasks and projects logged in our task management system, monday.com.
Sorted Communications is and always has been a remote company; that’s always made the most sense to us as it enables us to be completely flexible for our clients. While this mode of working was still relatively unusual pre-pandemic, it’s now fairly commonplace. It’s been so interesting to see how traditional ways of working have had to evolve over the past 18 months, and how they’ll continue to do so.
In March, our CEO, Ali Marsland, was a panellist at Inside Government’s ‘The Future of Work in the Covid-19 Era’ virtual conference. It was interesting to see how other companies have adapted to a remote working model (some better than others!) when it’s all we’ve ever known. Ali was able to share some of the methods we use to keep everything running smoothly despite the fact that we’re all many miles apart (even our ‘virtual water cooler’ i.e. our WhatsApp group chat). It seems that the general shift towards an acceptance of remote working is here to stay – even as many people are gradually returning to offices.
Our remote team continued to grow during 2021, both in size and in geographical reach, as we welcomed three new permanent team members:
- Laura, based near Liverpool, joined us in March as our marketing and communications assistant. She leads on social media, keeps our website updated, and supports on some of our clients’ comms activities.
- Katie, based in Swindon, joined the team as our communications manager in May. She primarily managed and delivers larger publication projects for our clients, as well as providing wider support to the team across various marketing and communications tasks.
- And finally, in November our new executive assistant, Marina, joined us. Marina now supports us right across the board, keeping us all organised and up to date with everything.
We’ve also welcomed three new members to the freelance team: Alison, Kate, and Lucy. It’s great to have them on board. As the Sorted team continues to grow, we hope to take on new clients in 2022, and help get their communications sorted (pun intended).
We always appreciate the positive feedback we get from our clients, and in April we were delighted to receive an award for ‘Most Efficient Writing & Editing Service’ at the annual SME UK Enterprise Awards. This was our second win in these awards, having also won the Best Business Communications Support Company award in 2020. Of course, we don’t do what we do for the recognition, but it’s heartening to see our hard work acknowledged.
As many of us do, we want to give back where we can, so now every time we receive a referral from a happy client to a new client, we say thank you by making a donation to our corporate charity, Practical Action. This year we’ve donated £250, which will go towards the charity’s important work in developing countries, providing practical and life-changing help to those living in poverty.
2021 has certainly been a year of change, both for us as a company and for the world as a whole. In the current climate, no one can say for sure what 2022 will bring, but we hope that, wherever you are, you have a restful festive season. We wish you a very merry Christmas and peaceful new year.